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[mythusmage]

Okay, we'll talk about how storytelling or story-creation techniques can add or detract from a particular style of play. (Actually, that's more moved to another thread that someone else started.) I think the issue some people are bringing up is that if you want play that has aspects of story creation, you can use techniques used in story creation in your play. Whatever you call that play, those techniques can be relevant (or not).

I prefer to treat my character as a character in a story, and decide their actions based on what I think will be most interesting and drive my agenda. That "author stance" is more like the playing piece approach than the immersion approach. It works for me, it doesn't work for others.

Were you interested in further discussing the benefits of immersion-focused play (which you've done to some extent here), or did you want to save that for another thread? Do you have particular issues with "story creation-ish" play other than that it's not your personal preference? I'd be interested in your views on the subject.

I tend to base my decisions on what would best help those I as my character am responsible for, or, If my character is not responsible for anybody, what would be best for me. Screw the drama, what gives the best result.

Where story creation is concerned, life can include elements of story creation. Where story creation involves events and situations that occur during the course of life. The trick then is to take those events and make them into a good story. In a sense we are all engaged in the foundations of story creation, we just don't make the effort to turn them into story.

At the same time there is a lot from story that can be included in any game. Villains and comedy relief for instance. Secondary characters, supporting cast, and extras for another. Presentation of the scene is very important, for it can make the difference between a lackluster encounter with a pit fiend, and an engaging encounter with a quartet of low level goblin musicians. So story and theater can play a role in RPGs.

My preference is immersion, keeping in mind that it is a role you're playing and not you. You want to start a new thread on the topic, feel free and I'll contribute to it as I am able.

 

[mythusmage]

Okay, now I'm starting to 'get' the gist of your argument. For the most part I agree with you on this point, but there are some things that are indeed story-like. Certain NPCs are placed somehwere with information, the location of lairs and monsters are known ahead of time to the GM, etc. The timeline may not be plotted, but at least some of the important points are, and the motivations/personalities of the antagonists is known.

This I agree with. However, the fact there are story elements in RPGs does not mean playing in an RPG is playing in a story.

In so far as adventures are works of imagination they must perforce include story elements. A good setting will included memes and tropes and elements of the game's genre or genres. D&D has dark lords, Vampire has dark dealings, and Toon has spit takes.

The GM sets the scene. The players enter it. The GM makes changes to account for the players trampling all over his carefully made plans. Thus it has been, thus shall it always be.

 

[mythusmage]

So is that part of your point, that thinking of play as a story can lead to railroading?

I think we addressed that in this thread a few days ago. If the "story aspects" you borrow for RPGing include "one author, fixed outcome", then yes, you get railroading. If you borrow other "story aspects" like "multiple authors, uncertain outcome", then there's no reason at all for that to lead to railroading. And the thing is, most other people in the thread are talking about "multiple authors, uncertain outcome".

If you want to talk about observed experiences, I'm happy to. The game I run involves a lot of techniques borrowed from storytelling. Players can describe their actions in narration, including changes to the environment. Sometimes they use dialog instead. We use scene framing techniques to skip long stretches of time and to prioritize certain events over others. We focus on certain themes we feel are relevant to play.

Those are storytelling techniques, not very immersion-friendly at all. But there's no preprepared plot, only story created through the collaborative input of GM and players, using system to help determine the outcome of uncertain events. I can't railroad this game, because I don't have a set outcome to aim for.

So maybe you can help me out. Is there storytelling, by your definition, involved in that kind of play? Or story creation? If not, okay, then I just disagree with your definitions of those terms. If so, then I submit that it is possible to borrow storytelling techniques for nonimmersive play without railroading.

If your main point is that thinking of the game as a story where the GM is the author and the players are characters is harmful, hey, I'll grant you that. It's not possible for the GM to author all the events in the game without removing the players' ability to do anything meaningful. It's not possible to let the players do meaningful things without removing the GM's ability to author everything. Some theories refer to this as The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, and I agree that it's an untenable situation.

But The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast doesn't apply to situations where GM and players are all authors working together to produce something whose outcome is unknown.

(Quoted in its entirety so people understand what I'm replying to.)

I agree that elements of story telling and story creation can be a part of play.

You get right down to it, RPGs are a lot like the elephant in the story of the six blind men and the elephant. You could describe RPGs in term of a part, but the whole is a very different beast altogether. RPGs do contain bits that have been around before, but they combine those parts in a new way. RPGs also do something not seen before in this world, present a fictional analog of life. With all the confusion and indeterminancy of life. Think not of the GM and players as authors, think of them rather as actors (in the sense of one who takes action) dealing with situations that can be very confusing.

 

[TheGM]

The GM sets the scene. The players enter it. The GM makes changes to account for the players trampling all over his carefully made plans. Thus it has been, thus shall it always be.

Agreed. I don't think I've ever had a "reused" adventure turn out the same twice, because of the difference in character personalities involved.

But the core plot points remain. When I write fiction, the outline survives at most half-way through the book, but again the core plot points remain.

That could be a function of my wife and I's writing style (we've definitely played longer than we've written book-length), but I suspect that any author with a strong feeling of the character's personalities and motivations does the same. If that's true, it minimizes the differences you see.

 

[Campbell]

Tack on to this the caveat that it is not an equal contribution, and I'll give it to you. My players decide the direction of the game, and many put lots of time into their characters outside of play (logging, working on history, building personality, etc.), but the contribution on the part of the GM is definitely higher.

I'm nitpicking your wording - it sounds as if it's an equal contribution when it almost never is.

My understanding is that in the way SweeneyTodd plays it is players do pretty much make equal contributions.

 

[mythusmage]

Agreed. I don't think I've ever had a "reused" adventure turn out the same twice, because of the difference in character personalities involved.

But the core plot points remain. When I write fiction, the outline survives at most half-way through the book, but again the core plot points remain.

That could be a function of my wife and I's writing style (we've definitely played longer than we've written book-length), but I suspect that any author with a strong feeling of the character's personalities and motivations does the same. If that's true, it minimizes the differences you see.

Oh yeah. In the middle of writing you realize that according to how you've presented a character he is not going to handle a situation the way you first thought he would. And changing how he handles it based on his characterization changes the rest of the story. Something that has given George R. R. Martin no end of trouble with the Song of Ice and Fire.

Of course, with an RPG the characters (the players playing those characters, but you know what I mean) can actually decide they want to do it another way, and their success is not guaranteed.

 

[fusangite]

I get the feeling you want RPGs to be story. That you need RPGs to be story. So when somebody shows up contradicting your beliefs you get all huffy about it. Rather than give what I say due consideration you reject it out of hand.

Mythusmage, this is why I'm going to stop corresponding with you in this thread. Anybody with fourth grade reading comprehension could go through the thread and find the multiple times I say that I don't enjoy the storytelling mode of play and much prefer the kind of simulationist games you like.

The reason I keep arguing with you is that you seem unable to distinguish between our (shared) tastes in RP gaming and the definition of RP gaming.

My premise re RPGs and story is based on observation of RPGs in play. Without exception the dynamics have been far closer to real life than to narrative, even when the players distance themselves rather than engage in immersion.

Right. And Sweeny Todd, I, all the members of The Forge, various people on this thread have witnessed people engaged in other types of play. A former roommate of mine only GMs games that function as storytelling. But, and here I'm repeating myself for the third time, you are unable to accept these people's accounts of what they have observed because you believe their perceptions of their own activities are so biased they cannot accurately report their own experiences to you. You, on the other hand, are an observer curiously and uniquely immune to such biases. This view of the other human beings is psychologically unhealthy. And I really do sincerely mean it when I say you should have it seen-to.

As to changing how we see RPGs changing why we play RPGs. A lot of people play because they think they're in a story.

So, if you convince them, somehow that they are "wrong" about this, they will keep playing RPGs? Maybe they will just find another storytelling activity if you convince them RPGs are not storytelling activities, given that this is the activity they are finding fulfilling. More likely, they will say, "Whatever, man, this is how I like thinking about the game I play. If I didn't like thinking about it this way, I wouldn't." Because, believe it or not, RPGs as a simulation of life rather than storytelling is discussed as a creative agenda in documents written by Edwards going back years, and has been discussed on internet discussion boards like this one for more than a decade. How can your realization be some kind of epiphany for people when it has, in fact, been a publicly discussed phenomenon in our hobby for years and years?

The "paradigm shift" has already happened. You just weren't watching. You remind me of the people who used to join the Green Party when I was involved in it. They would have just realized the other day that there was some kind of ecological crisis going on on the planet threatening the very fabric of human civilization. They would show up and demand why we hadn't informed everybody of this and castigate us for our negligence in getting people to realize what was going on. We would inform them that we had indeed been using every available outlet: brochures, canvassing, media interviews, etc. to tell people about this. They wouldn't believe us. If they hadn't noticed this before, the fault had to be ours not theirs. They could not accept that something that they now realized was profoundly important was something they had previously failed to notice.

Needless to say, they would rush out and tell everyone the urgent news that the planet was dying. And yet, people wouldn't all suddenly change their lives and join the party just because they were notified of this allegedly new information. Somehow, these individuals assumed that because a piece of information was, at that particular moment in their lives, life-changing for them, it would have that effect on everyone. In the course of their evangelical project, they would discover people who (a) didn't care about or bother to comprehend their paradigm-shifting message, (b) people who had already heard the message and did not accept its truth, (c) people who had tried changing their lives and voting patterns after hearing the message and then become disillusioned, (d) people who had had another political/ecological epiphany that reordered their priorities in a different way, (e) people who had undergone the shift, changed their lives and couldn't understand what had taken this individual so long to figure things out.

In case you haven't noticed, in your version of this story, I'm in group (e). What I'm trying to do is explain to you is the existence of groups (a) through (d). Sweeney is in group (d). Of course, I have dealt with your epiphany a little differently in that I engage in non-immersive simulationist play but that's not a big deal.

Their perception changes they might play because they can vicariously experience life in an imaginary world. Some day soon I hope to post why the RPG as story paradigm is not only wrong, it is harmful. Until I can post it I will leave you with this word, "railroading".

Right -- because you resolutely refuse to acknowledge any examples of storytelling without railroading that Sweeney or I post.

On being wrong. I could be wrong. But you have yet to present anything that might persuade me. As the old writer's advice goes, "Show, don't tell."

We do show you. But you pretend we haven't, refusing to acknowledge any section of any post we make that actually demonstrates that you are incorrect.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Sorry, I'm not trying to monopolize the thread with my crazy moon language gaming style, or anything. I do a lot of gaming where the GM provides most of the creative input and the players restrict themselves to protraying the characters; I just haven't been doing much of that recently.

I'm thinking about it, and I'm not sure if there's much any of us disagree on, other than preferences and definitions. MM says to not think of roleplaying as storytelling, but he's okay with the use of techniques borrowed from storytelling. I don't care about the definitions, so there's not much there I'd argue against.

 

[TheGM]

Of course, with an RPG the characters (the players playing those characters, but you know what I mean) can actually decide they want to do it another way, and their success is not guaranteed.

I don't know why, but this got me to laughing about writing a book that jarringly ended halfway through the story because of a TPK. I'm guessing it wouldn't be popular.

 

[fusangite]

I don't know why, but this got me to laughing about writing a book that jarringly ended halfway through the story because of a TPK. I'm guessing it wouldn't be popular.

I think we need more books like that, myself. This is one of the ways to distinguish games with a storytelling-oriented agenda; the conditions under which characters can die tend to be radically different.